Perspective (visual arts)

“ The great sweep of vision, a sweep covering a hundred subjects perhaps, is obtained by turning the eyes up or down or sideways. But to be true—that is, to see one picture at a time—the eye should be fixed like the lens of a camera, the limit of the picture being the range of the eye and no more. A departure from this rule not only confuses your perspective but crowds a number of points of interest into the square of your canvas, when there is really only one centre point before you in nature ”

“ Thus by the magic of pictorial design our vision is caught and so controlled that a single glance, sweeping the picture in the direction ordained by the artist, gives us a definite feeling of movement. ”

“ Here, in this book, for example, are one hundred photographs of one hundred of the most famous sights, scenes and monuments in the whole world. To see these sights, these scenes, these monuments, is to attain a liberal education. Now what is seeing? Seeing, the philosopher will tell you, is to have certain waves of light strike your eye and create an impression on your retina of the objects that are in front of you. The retina, in other words, is nothing but a natural camera obscura. And what is a photograph? ”

“ In other words and as I shall never tire of repeating, the differentiating characteristic of art is that it makes you think back to the shape once that shape has conveyed its message or done its business of calling your attention or exciting your emotions. And the first and foremost problem, for instance of painting, is that of preventing the beholder's eye from being carried, by lines of perspective, outside the frame and even persistently out of the centre of the picture ”

“ For if we can not see a picture in a fine piece of music or hear the strains of a distant song in a picture,—if we can not drink of the beauty of both with the eye as well as the ear,—we had better seek entertainment in a picture gallery, where hang many a visible palpable specimen of colors rioting in quadrangles of gilded mouldings, of colors clamoring for recognition in the little square horizons of the artist's soul. ”

“ It is as in those devices of perspective, where certain beautiful designs look like mere confusion until one restores them to the right angle of vision or one views them by means of a certain glass or mirror. ”

“ In the whole composition there should be no word written, of which the tendency, direct or indirect, is not to the one pre-established design. And by such means, with such care and skill, a picture is at length painted which leaves in the mind of him who contemplates it with a kindred art, a sense of the fullest satisfaction. ”

“ It is true that in looking at this huge composition you look at many pictures; it has not only a multitude of figures but a wealth of episodes; and you pass from one of these to the other as if you were "doing" a gallery. Surely no single picture in the world contains more of human life; there is everything in it, including the most exquisite beauty. ”

“ There can, however, be no doubt as to the utility of the visualising faculty when it is duly subordinated to the higher intellectual operations. A visual image is the most perfect form of mental representation wherever the shape, position, and relations of objects in space are concerned. It is of importance in every handicraft and profession where design is required. The best workmen are those who visualise the whole of what they propose to do, before they take a tool in their hands. ”

“ But even from the point of view of the true visual perception (if there is such a thing) that modern art has heard so much talk of, the copying of the retina picture is not so great a success. The impression carried away from a scene that has moved us is not its complete visual aspect. Only those things that are significant to the felt impression have been retained by the mind; and if the picture is to be a true representation of this, the significant facts must be sorted out from the mass of irrelevant matter and presented in a lively manner. ”

“ When the eyes are caught by something in a picture, they do not at first rest there, but proceed, as we have said, on a tour of inspection of the whole area within the frame of that picture, after which they return again to the first visual interest. In making this tour the eyes seek, or at least, follow a pattern. ”

“ But instead of superseding the arts of design, photography will but supply them with new materials,—with collections of costume,—with studies of drapery and of forms, and with scenes in life, and facts in nature, which, if they possess at all, they possess imperfectly, and without which art must be stationary, if she does not languish and decline. ”

“ By what art or mystery, what craft of selection, omission or commission, does a given picture of life appear to us to surround its theme, its figures and images, with the air of romance while another picture close beside it may affect us as steeping the whole matter in the element of reality? It is a question, no doubt, on the painter's part, very much more of perceived effect, effect after the fact, than of conscious design—though indeed I have ever failed to see how a coherent picture of anything is producible save by a complex of fine measurements. ”

“ Enough has now been said to illustrate how design in a picture can control our attention during the pauses and arrested moments on the screen, and by so doing can relieve the eyes of unnecessary, wasteful work and give unity and emphasis to the message of the picture. But still other powers reside in design. While it hastens our grasp of meanings, and even accentuates those meanings, it can affect the mind in other ways that are still more important. And if we delve deeper into these ways we shall come out with a clearer vision of the artistic possibilities of the movies. ”

“ Art, in the present age, stands conspicuous for its great achievements in Truthfulness, which has been guided and assisted by the aid of the Camera. Perspective, the great key to Art, was fabulous before Photography was introduced; and by its aid what perfection has it not obtained, not only is distance42 mathematically exact, but the round, soft, accuracy of light and shade in nature, is most beautifully defined! ”

“ I always laugh when I hear people say that my ideal is the camera. They never see the reality clearly enough in all its beauty to wish to reproduce it in its entirety. I would willingly be a camera if I could get some of the wonders I see in the fact. ”

“ The attractive value of an object in the scale of balance may be weakened by moving it toward the centre or extending the picture on that side.
Motion toward, either in intention or by action, is equivalent to balancing weight in that space of the picture to which the action is directed.
Light is increased by deepening contiguous tones; dark, by heightening contiguous tones.
A still-life may be constructed on the same lines as any form on the vertical plane and many of the perspective plane of composition. ”

“ The light masses instead of the dark masses dominate the pictures, which have great brilliancy.
These tone values are only to be perceived in their true relationship by the eye contemplating a wide field of vision. With the ordinary habit of looking only at individual parts of nature, the general impression being but dimly felt, they are not observed. The artist has to acquire the habit of generalising his visual attention over a wide field if he would perceive the true relation of the parts to this scale of values. ”

“ TECHNIQUE and rules, idea and action are as chaff on the threshing floor of the photodrama compared to visualization, which is the precious kernel to be sought. Visualization is both the key and the keynote of all photoplay-writing. ”

“ At such times the whole pattern on the screen becomes as static as a painting, and its power or weakness, its beauty or lack of beauty, may be appreciated much as one would appreciate a design in a painting.
A painting enchants the beholder, not only by its color, but also by its lines and pattern. The peculiar power which resides in the arrangement of lines and masses has been studied by art critics for hundreds of years, and many of the principles which they have discovered might well be recalled by us in judging those moments of a motion picture which may be viewed as fixed designs. ”

“ If we suppose a view of nature, represented with all the truth of the camera obscura, and the same scene represented by a great artist, how little and how mean will the one appear in comparison of the other, where no superiority is supposed from the choice of the subject. ”

“ Where the subject lies directly in the foreground, the eye will find it at once, but the care of the artist should even then be exercised to avoid lines which, though they could not block, might at least irritate one's direct vision of the subject. ”

“ The substitution of simultaneous retinal perception of form for successive perception has the effect of bringing together the terms of the relations of variety and contrast, unity and similarity, under what is approximately one act of attention. If we watch the movements of a painter's hand as he draws the outline of a human figure on a canvas, our eye may attain a rough perception of the successive directions and distances ”

“ Such a blotted paper held at a distance from the eye would strike the spectator as something excellent for the disposition of the light and shadow though he does not distinguish whether it is history, a portrait, a landscape, dead game, or anything else; for the same principles extend to every branch of art. ”

“ We trust much to pictures, lantern slides, cinematograph displays; but without labour there is no profit, and probably the pictures which remain with us are those which we have first conceived through the medium of words; pictures may help us to correct our notions, but the imagination does not work upon a visual presentation; we lay the phrases of a description on our palette and make our own pictures ”

“ And so it seems but right that, being so utterly unable to reach the heights or the depths of what we wish to depict, we ought to send back and keep down every step or key of our board in the same proportion as our lights and our darks are—make our picture, in fact, not so much the imitation as the dim reflection that we see in a window sometimes when there is a dark cloth hung behind it, or in the camera obscura. ”

“ The first difference is that when we look at a painting we ourselves are practically the choosers of when and how long to look at any spot, line, shape, or color. In other words, we ourselves practically decide on how much and what kind of work our eyes shall do; but when we look at a motion picture we never know at any instant what we may be called upon to do the next instant. ”

“ These senses provide the basis for all the arts—music and poetry are arts of sound; painting, sculpture, and architecture are arts of vision. And there are good reasons for their special fitness. Most cogent of all is the fact that vision and hearing are the natural media of expression; sounds, be they words or musical tones, convey thoughts and feelings; so do visual sensations—the facial expression or gesture seen communicates the inner life of the speaker; and even abstract colors and space-forms, like red and the circle, have independent feeling-tones. ”

“ The moving picture is scarcely twenty-five years old. Born of a matchless technical invention, it demands to-day, with the unrelieved arrogance of the proverbial upstart, complete recognition in the society of the arts There, in the company of the established arts, it finds illustrious companions each of whom looks back upon a proud tradition of hundreds and hundreds of years. ”

“ We are not now speaking of such qualities as unity, emphasis, balance, and rhythm. They are indeed fundamental needs in pictorial composition, and yet a photoplay may have all of those qualities without possessing any strong appeal as art. A motion picture, like a painting, must possess other, more subtle, qualities if it is to make any lasting impression upon our souls. ”

“ RHYTHM AND REPOSE IN FIXED DESIGN Directness, ease, emphasis, unity—these are the things which we have just demanded of cinema composition, the pictorial form which contains, and at the same time reveals, the story of a photoplay. But we demand something more. We do not get complete æsthetic pleasure from any composition which merely contains and reveals something else. ”

“ It is not a shadow, for it is real,—which latter fact is proved daily by those who first coax this image to enter a camera, and no sooner does it get fairly in than the clever artist impales it against a tablet of glass, or ivory, and lo! everybody carries the chained image to his home for everybody else to look at, who chooses so to do. ”

“ It is strange to think how a scene, in itself uninteresting, becomes agreeable to look at in a picture, from the truth with which it is depicted, and a perfection of colouring which at once contrasts and harmonises the hues of sky and water. ”

“ The message of impressionism is light, as the effort of the early painters was to secure light, the quest of all the philosophies. The impressionist calls upon every part of his work to speak of light, the middle tint, the high lights and the shadow all vibrating with it. From the decorative point of view alone, the picture, as a surface containing the greatest amount of beauty of which the subject is capable is more beautiful when varied by many tones, or by few, in strong contrast, than when this variety or contrast is wanting. ”